A Jerusalem judge on Wednesday ruled against MK Simcha Rothman in a defamation suit the lawmaker filed over a 2023 report according to which he seemed to imply that the lives lost in a West Bank terror attack were of more value than the lives lost during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel.

According to the Channel 12 report by correspondent Guy Peleg, Rothman told security officials in a closed-door meeting, just weeks after the Hamas terror onslaught, that “the blood of brothers Hallel and Yagel Yaniv who were murdered in Huwara is redder than the blood of those murdered on October 7.”

The comments attributed to Rothman referred to the victims of a Palestinian terror attack in the village of Huwara in February 2023. The Hebrew idiom he used is drawn from a Talmudic dictum — “Who is to say that your blood is redder than his?” — and is meant to rebut valuing one person’s life over another’s.

According to the original report, Rothman retracted his statement after it “shocked” those present. The report did not include context for the statement.

Rothman, who was seeking NIS 1.1 million ($357,000) in damages, claimed to have communicated the opposite. According to his lawyers, he “said the blood of those murdered in past terror attacks should have justified a change in policies as their blood was also red — the exact opposite of what [Peleg] claimed.”

Several officials who were........

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